Between 2010 and 2021, unilateral sanctions caused ~564,258 deaths each year – more than five times the number of people killed annually in direct armed combat. This warning comes from a new report published in The Lancet, which contextualizes decades of data on how sanctions affect mortality.
“From a rights-based perspective, evidence that sanctions lead to losses in lives should be sufficient reason to advocate for the suspension of their use,” the study’s authors argue. But that is far from reality. Over the same decade, nearly a quarter of all of the world’s countries were affected by sanctions, driven primarily by a sharp increase in unilateral economic measures imposed by the United States and its European allies.
While Western sanctions “have the claimed aim to end wars, protect human rights, or promote democracy,” the report shows they do the very opposite. By restricting a country’s ability to import essential goods like food, medicine, and medical supplies, and by slashing public budgets, sanctions systematically undermine healthcare systems and other vital services.
Food and medicine aren’t subject to sanctions in the case of Russia. AFAIK agricultural machines also aren’t yet, despite evidence that some of its components had been reused for military equipment.
Contrast this with sanction on countries like Iran or until recently Syria, that affect food and medicine.
Yes, the EU and the USA should widen sanctions on Russia to cover food and medicine too.
We should do the same to israel right?
we should stop sending unlimited bombs and air defense missiles to Israel too
right
Good
Statements like this only help Russia to claim that Ukrainians and their supporters are genocidal Nazis.
No sane people care about what Russian nazies claim.
By saying to deny medicine and food to a population you only make it more likely that you are perceived in the same way. It is wrong and nothing good comes out of starving and denying medical treatment to people.
EDIT: Wow, people now downvoting opposition to crimes against humanity.
Fuck off, there’s only room for hate on Lemmy. You just have to make sure it’s directed at the other guys*.
We’ve been down this road with North Korea. If a country’s leadership wants to burn the proverbial furniture and impoverish its people to fuel their war machine, no amount of foreign aid or trade is going to stop the impoverishment, because they will leverage it to offset spending to even more war.
The whole reason why israel didn’t collapse is that we keep sending them billions to finance occupation and genocide
Which needs to stop and Israel must be sanctioned both militarily and economically. Still doesn’t justify denying them access to food and medicine.
Israel csn produce them by themselves
A strong majority of russians are genocidal imperialists.
An overwhelming majority are broadly supportive of imperialism (on top of the strong majority that are openly genocidal).
The vast majority of russian consider “human rights” to be polemical tool to help forward their aims of genocidal imperialism.
And please don’t bring up “They are all afraid! They actually all oppose putin!” There are well established methodologies for evaluating preference falsification (who could have thought?) and they’ve been applied to multiple research topics with respect to attitudes of russian society. The results are damning. With respect to the annexation of Crimea, which has had consistent support at around ~85% for 7-8 years of polling, preference falsification has been estimated to be a mere 1%, i.e. it is completely irrelevant.
I don’t see why this is relevant to the question of whether one should commit crimes against humanity or not. There is no justification for denying food and medicine to people.
By seeking justifications for that, you end up becoming like the people you claim to fight against. They will tell you the exact same thing as to why their crimes would be justified.
There is no justification for denying food and medicine to people. No matter what they think. No matter what they did. It is a line you cannot cross without destroying your own humanity.
What a childish take. Russia is major exporter of grain, blocking all food exports to russia is not “denying food to people”.
Same with medicine, you’re acting as if russia has no internal production of medicine. Blocking all exports of medicine to a group where the overwhelming majority wish you harm is very much justified.
And you know that Russia is able to produce all necessary medicine? You know that Russia is producing all the food necessary?
Vice versa you say Russia is a major exporter of grain. Should that be prohibited then? What about the countries that buy that grain?
And again, by following this line, you give the justification for other countries to do the same. They will claim the same about “wishing you harm” and frankly if you say they shouldn’t receive any medicine, it is based in reality. Running this race to the bottom will only harm humanity and not just people in Ukraine and Russia.